Resurging Tides
by Kaiorven
Summary: Uzumaki Naruto, born, bred and raised in the Land of Whirlpool, never intended to be thrust into the Land of Fire. But as the heiress to an isolated clan in a Shinobi world still dominated by the warring factions, when an alliance is offered on a silver platter by their traditional enemies, who is she to reject it? AU, Fem!Naruto.
1. Chapter 1

In which Kaiorven chooses to procrastinate with fanfiction rather than study. Goddammit.

Edit: Apparently, since there are now two chapters up, it will be continued, if sporadically.

Disclaimer: Not mine, else I would charge money for you to read this. Also, I would be more motivated to finish if I were getting paid.

Tell me what you think of the summary, and how it can be improved. Someone who is willing to offer permission for me to use their image as a cover would also be appreciated, or I guess we can stick to the parrots. They're cute enough, I suppose.

Sorely needed: A good beta-reader with a week or less in turn-around rate.

* * *

><p>"Naruto?" she could hear Kushina calling from beneath the water. The outline of her mother and the late afternoon light was splintered by the rippling of ocean-skin. She rolled, her body streamlining, hands and arms projected into a point, and surged forth to the surface. "Naruto!"<p>

"What?" she whined. The currents surged around and over her, threatening to tug her from the shores of Whirlpool again and send her tumbling, but she anchored herself to the shifting sand with chakra.

"We're having visitors. They're a damn stuffy bunch – you can't expect any less from a Fire Clan." Her mother extended a hand. Naruto grasped it, stumbling ashore, shivering from the transition from the smooth weight of water to cold air.

The breeze sent her mother's red hair whipping behind her like a pennant. It was in the Uzumaki genes – hair that looked artful no matter the climate or circumstance. Naruto rather suspected hers, still wet and blonde, looked rather much like a spiky sea-monster.

"Where's Menma?" As soon as she reached ashore, her younger brother gave a cheeky wave.

"You're late, Naruto!" the brat sing-songed. If he wasn't her younger brother, and if she wasn't dripping wet, cold, and covered in sand, she would have strangled the boy.

"I don't get it. Why do I have to be there?" She trudged forward, wringing her hair dry. "Why can't you meet them alone? Why do they have to see me?"

Her brother giggled at her apparent distress. In retaliation, she flicked him behind the ear. "Ow!" he clasped a hand over it. "Kaa-chan, Naruto hurt me!"

Her mother hoisted Menma into her arms, and blew a kiss behind his ear. "There. All better now?" Her brother sighed in contentment, nodding. Sneaky little brat. He probably just wanted a cuddle in the first place. "And you have to meet them, Naruto, because you're the Uzumaki heir. You're going to have to start dealing with formalities sooner or later."

Her brother stuck his tongue out at her and crossed his eyes.

"When you're fifteen, I'm passing the title to you, so don't you dare mock me," she told Menma.

He merely cast at her from his higher position a lofty look, as if to say, _it'll be far too late then, muahaha_.

"It is to be equally as formal as our anniversary of independence," Kushina said. Naruto groaned. "No, I take that back." Naruto relaxed. "More formal than that. Much more formal."

Naruto's shoulders slumped forward in disgust as the sand squished between her toes. As she walked, sand shifted into earth and beaten dirt, hard under her bare feet.

There were no walls between the shore and the village, for the sea and their seals formed the barrier. The houses of the Uzumaki formed a ring, domed paper-like constructions painted with blood and ink, as solid as any stone yet even more collapsible than a tent, to be carried in a Sealing-Abode scroll the size of a backpack.

A common joke among her clan was that the Senju had once boasted of being able to build houses wherever they were; to which an Uzumaki had replied that they could carry their houses on their backs to wherever they wished to be.

Around her, Uzumaki women stirred pots over open fires, while Uzumaki men speared meat on spits and skewers for turning over the flames. She could hear the sound of running children giggling over drawn lines in the dirt, turning cartwheels, spitting honey-melon pips in the grass. It was a sea of tanned faces; her brother wriggled out of his mother's arms to join the conglomeration of red hair.

"Naruto! You're back!" Her cousin, Karin, greeted her with a punch on the shoulder. "How long can you spend out by the sea anyway?"

Naruto gave an unrepentant grin, tucking her arms behind her head. "I nearly managed to make it to the central fault-current! I would have too, if I didn't have to be meeting foreigners tonight."

"Oh hush you. Besides, you never know – the envoys they're sending this year might be gorgeous," Karin smirked, buffing nails on her shirt, sweeping her long hair up into a mock bun before striking a pose. "How does this look?"

"Absolutely ravishing," Naruto deadpanned. "You're free to pretend to be me, if you want."

Karin let her hair cascade back over her shoulders, and adjusted her glasses. "And deny you of the pleasure? Never." Seeing Naruto's peeved expression, she added, "I'll help you with the clothes though, if you see a cute foreign shinobi and happen to drop my name a few times." She winked.

Naruto laughed. "Deal. I'll call you once I've washed."

Running water was a luxury, but quick seal storage and self-heating tubs were not. Naruto deactivated a water-holding seal etched on the base of a metal flask, watched it pour into a wide wooden tub, and then with a twist of chakra and the press of her palm, activated a heating-seal etched into its base.

She came out wrinkled and salt-free, wrapped in a towel and robes.

The mirror that Naruto had in her room was custom-made from the blown glass of the Land of Water. As expensive as it was, she only ever bothered to use it once a year; on the Anniversary of Independence. This was the first year she'd used it twice.

"Do you have any idea which Clan is visiting?" Karin asked, her mouth full of copper hair-pins to deal with the Naruto's mess of blonde mane.

"Mum didn't say," Naruto shrugged, at which point Karin hissed at the movement and forced her head still. "I didn't even know we communicated with any Fire-land Clans since our schism with the Senju." She stopped speaking as Karin handed her a lip-paint brush.

The usual Uzumaki cosmetics and war-paint repertoire consisted of golden hues, dark lines, and a touch of smoke. It came with the colouring. Of course, they tended to clash with Naruto, who was relatively fair – "Like a Fire-dweller," her aunt Nanami had once said.

It had been difficult not to get too offended.

"If you ever quit being a kunoichi, you can be my personal assistant before State affairs," Naruto informed her cousin, after her face was done. "You can do all my paperwork and make-up and make sure I don't accidentally offend some civilian noble."

"Like you could afford my genius on a daily basis," Karin told her, sliding a few more pins into place to cage her hair. "Also, your yukuta is horrible. It looks like your brother puked over it."

"I like orange!" Naruto defended her choice vigorously. "It's a perfectly nice colour!"

"You're even worse than our clan head – Aunt Kushina," Karin said, after looking around to check if said person was out of earshot. "And your mother wears red – as a redhead." She stepped away from the mirror, to riffle through Naruto's assorted clothing. "Wow, you really have nothing."

A blue kimono was pulled out and then discarded, after Naruto threatened to shred it if she so much as touched it.

"I'm a kunoichi," Naruto folded her arms. "Who needs finery anyway? I spent all my ryo on sharp pointy things."

"I wasn't aware ramen was sharp and pointy," Karin countered.

Naruto retrieved one of the multiple pins scattered on her vanity. "It's not, but this is," she offered sweetly, balancing it like a senbon between two fingers, threatening to let it fly. Any insult to Ramen was serious business.

Karin rolled her eyes. "Put that down before you hurt yourself – ahah!" With a flourish, her cousin pulled out a white yukata, this one with the designs of flames wreathed around the base and the edges of the sleeves, fox-red and yellow-gold. "Why don't you choose this one?" her cousin coaxed.

It looked better than the blue one with sakura flowers, Naruto supposed, since the fire design was really cool. It had a deeper neckline than she'd prefer, though, especially since she was only slightly less flat than a washboard.

"It's even got some orange on it!" Her cousin waved it around emphatically. "How could you not like it?" At Naruto's stubborn reluctance, Karin advanced menacingly. "You have nothing else. Put it on, or I'll put it on for you."

Naruto gulped.

* * *

><p>The constructed pavilion was larger than her entire house.<p>

"Thank you for inviting us to be here," said Uchiha Fugaku, straight-backed in his seat. Beside him, his wife clung to his arm, a seeming trophy-wife to civilian eyes. No one in the room was civilian, however, and though Naruto herself was not as skilled as her mother, let alone her father, she could see the deadly grace in Uchiha Mikoto.

Kushina laughed. It seemed that Aunt Nanami (Karin's mother) had advised her against the pure red kimono she preferred; instead it was deep blue. "It's wonderful to meet you. I had the pleasure of meeting your consort while I was in the Fire Daimyo's court."

Fugaku tilted his head to acknowledge her father Uzumaki Minato. "I have not had the pleasure of meeting yours personally, but his name is certainly not unknown throughout our ranks. I thank you and your consort for the service you did the Uchiha against the Senju. Not many men can singlehandedly cripple a once-mighty clan –"

There was no change in her mother or father, but the slightest edge, a shift in atmosphere perhaps, like smoke from a distant blaze seemed to tinge the air. Naruto resisted the urge to sigh. Even though the war was thirteen years ago, none dared speak of it, even now; the death toll had been atrocious, and the means of ending it even more so.

Fugaku paused, apparently aware of the shift in atmosphere, and then added, "I hope that my own son will follow in your footsteps."

"Perhaps that would not be the best outcome for the Uchiha if he does," her father said, calm turning into cold like the glint of snow on steel.

The Uchiha patriarch smirked rather than stiffening at the insult while his wife gracefully sunk into her seat. "Indeed, perhaps not. This is our second son, Uchiha Sasuke. Unfortunately, Itachi was not able to make it. You understand."

Uchiha Sasuke had hair that somehow managed to be simultaneously spikier than hers, and yet as artful as her mother's, in a cut-it-himself-with-a-kunai kind of way. He apprised the each of them with black eyes, before dipping his head and saying the requisite, "It is an honour to be here."

He probably had a pole jammed up his ass. Karin would love him.

Naruto looked around at the tense occupants of the table, and resisted the urge to fiddle with her obi, or kick the table leg. "What he said."

"Naruto!" her mother chided, and she felt a kick under the table, while her father and Uchiha Mikoto chuckled, the latter stifling her laugh behind a wide sleeve.

"She's certainly blunt," said Uchiha Mikoto but ventured no more, probably being tactful enough not to overtly insult a Clan Heir.

The Uzumaki chefs brought in cuts of sashimi, caviar, shellfish and sea-kelp salad set with dandelion leaves, gooseberries, and imported lettuce. Shark-fin soup and grilled eel also graced the table.

"Nevertheless, for the upcoming Showcase in Fire, we do have other applicants to choose from." Fugaku speared a cut of tuna, "Let us be frank. The reason why we're interested in incorporating your daughter into the entrant team of our son –"

Here Naruto nearly choked on the oyster she had plucked from its shell.

"–Is because the Senju, after their timely implosion," Fugaku tilted his glass of freshly poured wine at her father, "Have chosen to form a bloc with the Sarutobi – and the Sarutobi links to the Akimichi and its two vassal clans the Yamanaka and Nara hint at a much wider faction."

"I must confess I have little knowledge of the affairs of Fire," demurred her mother, slicing up her sea-bass into ever-smaller bites. "Though I was always under the impression that the Hyuuga at the Land of Lightning border were your allies by distant blood."

"Two clans do not equal a bloc, and our alliance is tenuous enough as it is, as half their resources are directed to keeping their place in The Land of Lightning," said Fugaku, "And with the wild-card of the Aburame and their Inuzuka vassals could mean the Senju are moving for encirclement."

"So our position towards the shores of Fire would alleviate that," her father said, not as a question, but as a statement.

"And the presence of your daughter – who, coincidentally, looks remarkably like you – will irritate the surviving Senju under Sarutobi no end." Naruto detected a flicker of malice, and a flash of red; but then it was gone. "Perhaps they shall remember their failures, and that only a decade after a war it is not their interest to start another, despite how much the odds seem favour them at the moment."

Kushina pushed away her plate; it scraped across the table; two taps, and the scraps upon it vanished, funnelled through the two-way seal into the bin. "And why do you think we would wish to place ourselves into yet more conflict when we only freed ourselves of it just over a decade ago. Are you mad?" Some of her real mother, with a quick temper and sharp tongue, returned.

"You cannot have many clients here in these isles of yours," Fugaku said. "And since your war with the Senju, no doubt the Sarutobi have stolen much of what you had built upon the mainland. We are giving you the opportunity to win it back – with our support."

A pause; Kushina looked away, but Naruto could tell when her mother was riveted.

"Traditionally, our second-born children are either married into our civilian stronghold, or into the Hyuuga. But perhaps, if the alliance proves worthwhile, we would consider… otherwise."

A sideways glance at his son. Naruto puzzled over the comment, before dismissing it. Who cared who married who? Apart from Karin, that was.

"I assure you it is not necessary at this juncture," said Uzumaki Kushina, scraping her chair back and rising, "Even considering supporting your 'faction' as you call it, is a serious matter; we must give it its full consideration before we answer. In the meanwhile, we have set up one of our houses for you, so you may travel back tomorrow at dawn. My sister-in-law, Uzumaki Nanami, will lead you."

Uchiha Fugaku nodded and stood. They shook hands over the table. "I understand your caution and isolationism, but I must warn you; our sphere of influence is the last barricade from the Land of Fire to the sea. It is true you have your Yellow Flash, your sealing, your whirlpools as defence. But the tides are changing, and should you choose to remain cloistered here, you may find that a united continent eager for your secrets and territory will not grant you any mercy."

And with that, he swept out with a dramatic flair even her mother would be hard-pressed to match.

* * *

><p>"It was a pity they rejected an engagement," sighed Uchiha Mikoto, her eyes spinning red and scanning the walls around them. Her hands blurred as they formed a series of seals, wreathing genjutsu after genjutsu in the room in order to nullify any surveillance seals inked into the walls.<p>

Sasuke could not help but glare at the ceiling as he sank onto the futons they had provided. "When we left Fire, you did not mention anything about a possible betrothal."

What was the point of all his training, all his efforts, if he ended up as nothing more than some breeder for another clan? Especially one as small as the Uzumaki, who lived on a damned island miles away from actual civilisation.

"Do not talk back to your mother that way," his father stood from his seated position on the futon. "Itachi, report."

Their guard shed his weasel-patterned mask. Officially, he was delivering a missive to the Land of Wind, but any group of ninja would be stupid to venture into unknown territory without some sort of advantage. "Total population, fifty. While active-combat ninja seem to be around thirty at best, all members, even apparent civilians, have the chakra capacity of a genin and the seals ability of our average chunin."

"Security mainly consists of ley-line seals forming a four-point network around the cardinal points of the island to sense intruders, and several rudimentary traps around the camp. From my brief scoping however, the Yellow Flash has scattered his teleportation loci over every household including this, and I would not be surprised if they filled the whole island. Apart from him, the biggest threats within this clan include the Clan Head, Uzumaki Kushina, who is high A-Rank in the Bingo Book, but if the Kyuubi is put into play, she could easily be deemed S-Rank. Uzumaki Nagato is also an S-Rank shinobi of the clan bearing the Rinnegan, possibly even rivalling the Yellow Flash himself."

Sasuke had to admit that small as this Clan was, their ratio of power to ninja forces was actually insane. No wonder they had survived so long in a war against a two-pronged attack.

Mikoto sighed and leaned back, exhausted from the web of genjutsu she had spun. "They did not seem too against an alliance, despite being staunchly opposed to a political marriage. Cautious and indecisive, perhaps, but not actively against us. Perhaps if we stayed –"

"Our clan will be becoming restless at the absence of its entire Head Family," Fugaku paced around the domed walls. "Besides, it would be better to conduct negotiations at a more neutral position. Conducting it here places the power in their hands."

They all froze at the sounds of footsteps outside. Itachi replaced his mask, taking a guard position by the walls again. Sasuke activated his Sharingan. His mother's genjutsu resembled an intricate lace web in a kaleidoscope of colours, shrouded by chakra emanating off the lines like soft mist. Through the half-paper, half-chakra walls rendered translucent by his kekkei genkai he could see faint human outlines of chakra; a pair of them.

Soft giggles then revealed it to be a drunken couple, stumbling their way back to whatever strange oversized origami building they called a house.

"There are no neutral spaces anywhere anymore in the Land of Fire," said Mikoto, "That is why we ventured off-continent, remember?"

Sasuke shuddered. He'd barely come out alive in a skirmish against the Sarutobi, who, upon reabsorbing the remnants of the Senju, had taken it upon themselves to oppose the Uchiha; a scar running down from waist to hip attested to that. The only advantage they had was their control over the sea trading routes.

"While we're here, try to gauge the strength of the Uzumaki heiress as best you can," said Fugaku to Sasuke, switching topics. "So we can choose the best candidate to round out your team."

_But we're leaving at dawn!_

Nevertheless, Sasuke nodded, as his mother said, "Enough now. We must rest. I'll take first watch."

The thrum of chakra from her genjutsu, held for a quarter of an hour now, faded into darkness, as Sasuke closed his eyes, unable to stop the tenseness that came with being in enemy territory.

* * *

><p>Naruto rolled over on her bed; her arm slung itself over her brother, who wriggled with the sudden weight on his ribs but did not wake. Though their beds were meant to be apart, his frequent nightmares meant that Naruto had dragged their futons together so when he needed a hug, she was there. Instead of her usual clothes, she opted for dark chest-wraps and trunks, then a fine mesh top. A towel and sandals were hastily donned. From her house she could see the stain of the sunrise over the silver sliver of coast-sea.<p>

"Make sure you get back in time to eat a full meal before your lesson with Nagato. I don't want to have to explain why my daughter is skipping her lessons yet again," her mother said as a morning greeting from behind the kitchen counter.

Naruto nodded, scooping seaweed-biscuits into her pack as she ran out the door and shoving one into her mouth. She crunched them between her teeth. They were as bad as trail rations, just as long-lasting, and just as disgustingly healthy.

A vessel somewhere between a boat and a ship stood moored towards the headlands; unlike the trader vessels, which were built to sustain weight, this one was clearly streamlined for speed. It was the most beautiful large-sized boat she had seen; the patterning and sleek curves of the wood like that of a sea-dragon; the raised tail emblazoned with an Uchiwa fan.

Her clan, small as it was, didn't have the resources to trade for such a boat; their vessels sailed okay, but nothing more. For speed races around the island they used kite-boats of fluttering bright cloth, little more than a board for a person and a mast to cling on; she and Karin usually used them when running missions civilian-side.

She had never been anywhere out of Whirlpool; her parents had never let her.

Her towel and swim forgotten, she approached it, touching the ridges of steel that capped the main body of the boat, patinaed against rust. The wood was already warm in the rising sun; she enviously spread a palm over the smoothness.

Her envy and musings were unpleasantly interrupted.

"Didn't your parents ever teach you to keep your hands off what wasn't yours?" The Uchiha spare stood on her beach, out of place as a burr snagging silk. His skin was paler than the sands she stood on – even paler than her, and she was pretty pale for an Uzumaki. She hoped he got sunburn.

Humiliated, a retort rose to her lips. "Keep your boats off our shores, then."

The look that he gave her was unimpressed; the sort that Nagato-sensei gave her when she was missing something really, really obvious – which was usually once an hour. Seeing that same look on a foreigner's face rankled. "We were invited. You were not."

She resisted the more childish impulse to kick sand into his face, before scowling. What a jerk. "Fine. I was just curious, but your ships aren't worth looking at anyway." She turned to stomp away, though the sand detracted from the effectiveness of it.

"Better than any of the ships your clan owns or will ever own on this island," said Sasuke, hands still in his pockets, expression irritatingly calm.

Her hands itched to claw him, punch him. No. She had self-control – she was the heir, and she hardly wanted to jeopardise her mother's diplomatic goals with the Uchiha–

"You should be thankful the Uchiha are offering an alliance to you in the first place, let alone sailing all this way to a barren wreck –"

She whirled to high-kick him in the jaw; her heel met thin air as he suddenly bent low, leg sweeping out and under – as if he had been expecting it. Knocked off-balance, she nevertheless managed to hand-spring back, and aimed a jaw-strike, which was quickly turned away at the wrist. A nerve-strike at the inner crook of her elbow rendered it numb; but she forced chakra down the limb to get it back into working order– a large chakra capacity was practically the only Uzumaki blood-ability she'd inherited.

She was quicker with her hands, but Sasuke was faster, taller, had better reach, and more powerful blocks. Naruto had always been strongest at taijutsu amongst those around her age, but weakest at sealing. Not that it counted for much if her clan's specialty was sealing and distance immobilisation rather than direct combat.

"If the heiress can't even land a hit –" said her opponent, whose face really needed to be punched. She took a few more blows, letting him get on the attack.

Her fingers curved into claws, palm facing forward, and with a twist of her wrist, spun her hand until her palm faced upward, channelling chakra all the while. A spiralling ball of purest blue formed in her right hand; another few twists of her wrists and fingers the sphere split into five smaller ones, each the size of a marble, one on each fingertip. As she formed the Claw-Rasengan in her right, her left blocked, her body precariously twisted to shield her slow-forming jutsu.

Once done, she all but tackled him, a leg hooking around his waist, slamming him back-first onto the sand so she straddled his stomach, face bared, whiskers feral, teeth bared into a snarl.

"I could kill you right now," she told Uchiha Sasuke, pushing her hand into the sand for emphasis. Grains flew, five individual ruts dug into the ground.

"I'd kill you first," he said. One of his pinned hands twitched; she felt the pressure of wire around her throat, threatening to garrotte her, before the tension loosened. She froze. How had she not noticed– "Get off."

She became acutely aware of their proximity, death-threats aside. Not to mention the fact that the only clothing she had over her underclothes was mesh, leaving her nearly bare. He twisted his hand, and the wire slipped loose – she scrambled up, dusting sand off of her knees.

"If you insult the Uzumaki again, I'll make sure you have no chance of ever spreading your clan lineage," she warned, though the heat had been blown out by the shock of how close she could have come to dying. She made a threatening gesture at his privates. "You won't catch me off-guard with the same trick twice."

"You should learn to keep your temper in check, if you're to be in my team for Trials," he said, ignoring her threat as he stood, apparently uncaring of the grit still scattered across the back of his shirt and in his hair. He tilted his head. "One would think that the heiress of a Clan that decimated the Senju would be a little less defensive about its size."

Naruto resisted gaping, and the urge to punch him rose up again. He had baited her, and she had fallen for it, hook, line and sinker.

"Sasuke!" she heard the call of his considerably-nicer mother. "We should be departing soon."

She was still shocked as he departed over the rise of the hill.

_What is this Team that everyone keeps mentioning, and what does it have to do with me?_

* * *

><p>Her father, the famous Minato Uzumaki nee Namikaze, the Yellow Flash, re-unifier of the Uzumaki, with a flee-on-sight order from every existing clan in the Land of Fire, and many more from the other continents, cowered in a manly fashion behind his apparently-important missive.<p>

"You what?" demanded Kushina. "Minato, back me up here!"

Naruto winced into her bowl of porridge. Next time, if she was going to confide in her father, she was not going to do so at the breakfast table.

"You should know better by now, Naruto," her father said, waving a hand vaguely so as to escape his wife's wrath, even though all he had done when she had told him the first part was chuckle and ruffle her hair. Then he grinned at his wife and Clan Head. "She's got your temperament, dear – doesn't take an insult lying down."

Kushina's brows, which had been drawn down into storm-clouds, reversed into a more neutral expression, swiftly mollified by the backhanded compliment. Plus, she was distracted enough by Menma, who had apparently taken it on himself to steal the raw ramen noodles. As a sister, Naruto was inordinately proud.

"Nevertheless, the Uchiha spare has a point." Kushina finally joined them at the table, swatting Menma's hands all the while. "Many outside of our Clan do look down on us for our size, for the fact that as a whole, we are not a Combat-oriented Clan; with the rare exception."

Here, she nudged Minato playfully, who pretended to be deeply absorbed in swirling his coffee. Naruto had no idea why her father liked it so much; though it smelled nice, it the beans were imported from the Land of Wind and thus damned expensive, and bitter.

Menma, in the meanwhile, was looking at her with the hero-worship of a brother who had just started ninja-training. "You beat him?" he asked.

Naruto preened. "Of course! You didn't think I was going to fall to someone with bird-ass hair, did you?" She carefully left the wire out of it. She had an image to maintain.

"Language!" chided Kushina, reverting back to strict-mother mode. "And don't encourage your brother to violence, Naruto."

It was her father who at last changed the conversation topic. "It's been over twelve years since the Uzumaki entered the Fire Trials. Would re-entering really be the best option?" His tone was tired; as though they had spent the past night arguing over it, and were merely rehashing the same fight.

"We're losing clients," said Kushina, with the self-same impatience of a repeated rebuttal. "Even those asking for sealing assistance have started to look elsewhere. Our names are being forgotten. If this continues, we won't have the funds to feed ourselves. We need to show them that the Uzumaki are not dead!" Kushina slammed her fist on the table; Naruto protectively cradled her breakfast while her father lifted up his mug. Menma giggled.

"You know why the Uzumaki haven't entered," said Minato, taking a drink. "You always relied on the Senju, before you –"

"We," said Kushina, softly. "We, Minato."

Naruto shrugged her blonde mane over a shoulder, trying to ignore the pall of awkward in the air. Even though she knew that her parents loved each other, it was sometimes hard to ignore how much of an _outsider_ her father really was.

Though he bore the Uzumaki name now, and the title of Consort, he had been raised in the forests of Fire, rather than on the coastal shores where salt sea-spray stained fire-red hair.

As a child, he had never dived the yin-yang whirlpools to become a full Uzumaki ninja. He had never tried swimming against the rip tides, harvesting shellfish in the rock-pools, grasping the tiny darting schools of fish that swum amongst the brilliant coral. He had never built sand forts to play ninja in, never practiced tattooing seals on himself with reused needles sterilised over open fires, never climbed down the island centre's rock-mines to hunt for ink-stones more precious than gold.

Most of the time, it didn't matter, not really. Her father was a likeable person, deeply in love with their Clan Head. He had won a war against the Senju, and had given them their Anniversary of Independence from the larger clan, which doubled as Naruto's birthday. There was no doubt as to his loyalty.

But his colouring (which Naruto had inherited in its full glory) marked him as an outsider. When he spoke, his words were all hard and sharp edged, where the Uzumaki accent flowed into liquid syllables and rounded vowels.

He could swim and spar and seal with the best of her clan, but they were just things he did, not things he loved. He loved coffee and woodlands, imported little wood-carved trinkets and his bonsai trees, and gardening and botany and bird-watching. Things from his old life, things much harder to find in Whirlpool.

Sometimes, though she would never say it aloud, she would think that Whirlpool wasn't his home, not really. Not when he looked across at the sea, like he was right now, to a land which had once been his; his gaze distant towards the shine of the coast, not for the ocean, but for what lay beyond. There was a wistfulness there; and sometimes (though she never admitted it, not even in her head) she thought she might have seen regret.

"I'm going to Nagato-sensei now!" she chirped with a forced cheer, grabbing a pre-made lunch off the table. "See you, mum, dad –" She swung out the door.

"What about me?" Menma squirmed in his seat, flailing with a chopstick in each hand, oblivious to the seriousness.

Naruto paused just outside. "Did I hear something?" Menma pouted at her. "Nah." And with that, she closed the door to the undercurrent tension, leaving it cleanly behind.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: The author is actually sort of uncertain with the timeline of the History of Konoha and the founding of the ninja villages and just pre-canon in general. Apologies for that. Her own watching/reading of the series is sketchy past the time-skip.

I really should be doing actual study. I really should be writing my other fanfics, or my original fiction, not focusing on this stub of an idea that I have no idea what exactly where it is headed and am flying blind by the seat of my pants or however else that saying goes.

I rarely do what I should, apparently.

Some basic diplomatic terminology (to my sad limited knowledge, I am no UN diplomat):

Mutual Assistance: If some other state attacks another member of the treaty, you have to help them fight them off.

Non-Aggression: You won't attack the other states in the treaty, under any circumstances. If another state attacks them, though, you do not have to lend them any aid.

Big Note on World-Building that you may feel free to skip entirely but who nerds like me might find interesting:

Naruto is post-industrialised as a place, because ostensibly when the ninja clans formed villages and became linked to, if not subjugated under the civilian monarchist Daimyo system, there existed enough peace necessary for economic institutions to form, for trade to grow, and for industrialisation to occur. I mean, it has everything but cars, guns and computers – it runs on electricity, it has radios, and other manufactured goods (prepackaged ramen in supermarkets!) that can only exist after industrialisation.

Industrialisation never occurred in this Naruto-verse, because the Clans never settled into villages. This actually makes consumer goods rarer, and kunai and shuriken are not cheap easy things to be tossed away. In fact, weaponry to be maintained such as swords and wire are preferred to kunai and shuriken in this universe, because to produce throwing weapons in standardised quantities and qualities, you need large-scale industry which this world does not have.

Coincidentally, Kumo is the most industrialised place in the Naruto-verse. Also, I'm pretty sure that if you were to compare the Naruto-verse nations to existing countries, Kumo would be the US, and Konoha Japan. Or at least, Kumo would be a vague sort of "America in the eyes of the Japanese" thing. Not that I would know, being neither American nor Japanese. Uh…

* * *

><p>When she reached the shore again, the gorgeous ship had already set sail. Pity. It had been the prettiest thing on the island.<p>

At their training spot, Karin was already sitting with her legs in a lotus position, eyes closed, taking slow, deep breaths at the top of a cliff. Meditating, probably. Naruto paused by the trunk of a sequoia, and grinned in anticipation. Come to think of it, it had been awhile since she'd last played a prank on Karin.

She gathered chakra to the base of her feet, and took a step up. Then she paused, and hopped back down, wincing at the noise her landing made. Gathering that much chakra would alert Karin before she even got there; even now she was just counting on Karin not paying attention until it was too late.

So instead she scaled the tree, using only the lightest touch of chakra to muffle the sounds and shore up her grip, gluing her fingertips and the toes of her combat sandals to the bark, curled up like a cat with an arched back. Up she went, swinging over to the highest branch which could support her weight, and edged outward, all eyes on the target, who was about twenty metres away.

Narrowing her eyes and crouching, she jumped up and out, bolstering her legs with chakra as she dived. "Gotcha!" she cried, pouncing and knocking her cousin back.

Instead of looking shocked, Karin's expression was calm, eyes perfectly lucid behind the frames of her glasses. "Oh really?" Golden chains burst into existence, binding Naruto's arms to her torso and her legs together. She really needed to learn how to counter line weapons – first wire, now chains? Ugh.

Naruto gaped at her cousin, betrayed. "You never told me you could manifest them!"

Karin smiled, just the barest curve at the edge of her lip. "A ninja never reveals her secrets." Her sweet tone immediately switched to one of threat, as the chains tightened. "Did you just try to throw me off the cliff?"

"Of course not!" Naruto squirmed a little, but to no avail, offering her most charming smile; the sort she tossed at Kushina after wasting precious seal-paper on yet another experiment. "Would I do that to my dearest cousin?"

"Yes. Yes you would." And with that, her not-so-dear cousin, with a formidable strength that could only come by cheating with chakra enhancement (never mind that she did it herself all the time) whirled her round and round, wind whipping hair into her mouth – and let go.

Another thing she needed to learn: a one-handed version of the Substitution Jutsu.

"Ahh!" Naruto turned a flip in mid-air, trying to re-angle herself to the cliff. Trying to land feet-first on the water would jar really, really badly, no matter how much chakra cushioning she used. On the other hand, getting wet – she caught sight of her (and Karin's) trainer. "Nagato-sensei!"

She bombed spectacularly into the water, the golden chains shattering then fading upon impact. Her fall sent up huge geysers, her hair spreading behind her as she turned a somersault in the landing. It was cold! She broke through the sea-surface, shivering, and then was seized by the scruff of her orange shirt and lifted bodily from the water.

Nagato-sensei had somehow managed to stay completely dry from his position atop the waves, and he wore an exasperated expression at odds with the multiple piercings adorning his facial features. He'd claimed they were a remnant of a rather rebellious childhood he rather regretted.

Naruto had believed him, at first, until Karin had developed her chakra-sensing to scary levels and had noted each metal stud was sealed with the chakra equivalent of reviving a Uzumaki chuunin from drained to full-strength. At which point they had both glanced at each other and breathed, _The Technique of Uzumaki Mito-sama_, with the worshipful awe of two sealers-in-training.

She probably shouldn't have zoned out while he was still reprimanding her. " –You're not listening to a word I say, are you?"

"Ah…" Naruto gave him her best _cute fox _rendition in the hope that it would save her currently wet ass from yet another humiliating beat-down. Nagato-sensei dished them out once a week, to "keep them on their toes", but more because he enjoyed torturing them. "Of course I am!"

"Then what did I just tell you?" He was pinching the bridge of his nose, now. She kicked her legs to futilely stop her currently dangling position. He obligingly dropped her, and she landed on her knees with a splash.

"To be more responsible?" She followed her sensei as he walked back to shore, shivering as she went.

He ignored her. "We'll be having a political theory lesson today," he told both his genin, "So when Naruto is due to leave for the Land of Fire, she won't accidentally get herself killed there. Will she?"

"I'll be the most sensible ninja on this side of the Continent. Believe it!" Naruto wrung the salt from her hair onto the sand. She licked her lips; they too tasted of salt.

"And Karin certainly will not send her cousin flying into any large pools of water from heights dangerous to civilians," added Nagato, "Especially not right before my departure for a mission."

"No matter how deserved?" Karin had settled back down into her meditating pose on the clifftop above them, feigning studiousness no doubt.

"No matter how deserved," said Nagato.

"How about after your departure?" Her eyes were closed, her tone even, as if she were not fishing for permission to beat up her dear cousin. "There's enough plausible deniability that even our Yellow Flash couldn't convict you."

"Nice try, but no." Nagato stepped ashore. While Naruto felt the sand crunching her feet with every step, Nagato left no footprints. She was so learning that trick as soon as she could wrangle it out of him. "Put away your kunai. It's time for our theory lesson."

If there was one thing the pair of cousins shared, it was their mutual hatred for theory. Who cared about map-reading and orienteering, algebra and calligraphy? Why bother squinting over codes in cryptography, or pondering over tactics and strategy in history when you could be using them on the field? What was theory to the excitement of practice, the satisfaction of feeling your weapons hit that perfect bullseye, of the gorgeousness that was a complete seal array, the brilliant flash and aftertaste of smoke from an exploding tag trap, the racing adrenaline of a good sparring session?

"Naruto can get some dry clothes on as well," said Nagato. "And before you use this opportunity to sneak off to who knows where –"

"The central fault current," sing-songed Karin. Naruto kicked sand at her, which she dodged.

"I heard nothing about how my dear student is regularly sneaking into off-limits areas," said Nagato pointedly as they headed from their training spot back to the village, "But if you are not here in ten minutes, I will assume you have defected and declare you a clan-traitor."

Both Naruto and Karin stifled sharp inhalations of breath. Clan-traitors were executed when they were caught; they were the lowest of scum and unworthy of the title ninja. To be called a traitor was the worst of all possible insults – the word was practically taboo in 'polite' ninja circles – of course, in some ways the mention of something so forbidden with such nonchalance only added to Nagato-sensei's coolness. Like his piercings.

"Got it," Naruto gulped, her sporadic shivers coming on more strongly at the prospect of her enraged mother hunting her down and humiliating her in the middle of the village. "I'll be going now kaythanksbye!"

* * *

><p>"We," said Nagato before the chalkboard, upon which he had pinned a detailed map of the Five Continents, complete with political and geographical detail, "Are going to talk about The Land of Fire."<p>

Naruto and Karin let out a mutual groan.

"Karin, if you ever want to pull missions outside of Whirlpool, you will stop sighing like this is beneath you, and learn. Naruto! You'll be outside our borders soon enough if your entry into the Fire Trials with the Uchiha is confirmed, and knowing such basic information will be vital."

Both girls had turned to stare out the window; a dripping-wet and shirtless Uzumaki Hanmaru had returned with his tow of catch in haul. Teenage kunoichi on the battlefield were tolerable, but off-field they were either foolishly love-struck or as lecherous as their male counterparts. Of course, the hell-cousins had chosen the latter, no matter how lady-like Karin pretended to be.

"Is it incest if he's a second cousin?" wondered the aforementioned girl aloud.

"Might be worth it." Naruto scuffed the ground with her foot. "He's not a ninja, though. Also, I heard that he was about to marry out to a rich civilian in Fire so we can get more regular shipments of bread and first priority in guard service."

"Pity," said Karin. "Of course, he's not an option for _you_. Your parents are going to ship in some foreigner for you to bed – and that's if you're lucky, or keep you cloistered until middle age if you're not. Your father hears you've dallied with him, and he'll be castrated before the end of the day." A sigh, "You think he'd be up for a kiss before he leaves?"

Karin was no doubt feigning experience she did not have; Nagato doubted that she'd ever locked lips with anything but her foodstuffs at the age of twelve and sheltered upon Whirlpool. Still, active sexuality amongst kunoichi was a sign of strength, toughness, maturity, of daring and adulthood, and even a sign of expertise (seduction, after all, was its own weapon) rather than the source of shame it was amongst civilian daughters.

Damn adolescence. He pitied whoever happened to choose to date either of the two hell-cousins. Onto crude bribery it was.

"Whoever I deem to have been the best student this lesson will be spared a beat-down this week, and perhaps a new jutsu, if I am so inclined."

And that got their attention; Karin had sat ramrod-straight, and Naruto shook her head, trying to dispel the glazed inattention she held. Their chairs scraped forward as they eyed the board with eager eyes.

Nagato turned back to the board. That was better. "Which are the Four Noble Clans?"

"Aburame, Akimichi, Hyuuga, Uchiha," said Karin, reciting rapid-fire learned-by-rote answers.

Naruto closed her mouth and scowled. "If this is just going to be calling out answers, then of course Karin is going to win."

"Kekkei genkai and abilities," added Nagato, ignoring his other student, drawing two columns on the board and a tally of four under Karin's name.

Of course, Karin won that too, before Naruto could get a word in edgewise. The heiress had long since given up, instead choosing to futilely slam her head on the table.

Well, she was a ninja. It was time for a distraction.

"The Uchiha spare is a real jerk." Naruto put on a light, airy tone as she drew patterns in the dust on her table with a fingertip; the dust was from the fact that they hadn't entered the schoolroom in well over three months. Of course, her hand-eye coordination was superb as a ninja and a sealer-in-training; she drew the perfect nautilus spiral of their emblem. Then she turned, half-teasing, half-conspiring to draw out Karin's curiosity. "But you know, he is good-looking. Knowing your priorities, you'd love him."

At this, Nagato stopped and butted in. "You spoke with their spare?"

"Fought with him, actually," said Naruto, no doubt pleased at the unexpected attention paid to her everyday activities. Then her voice lowered in embarrassment as she hunched down into her seat. "He – well, he riled me. Probably because he wanted to figure out my or something."

"And you let him?" Nagato gave her _The Look_.

"He has that expression too!" Naruto waved her hands around in a show of frustration. "The one you give me when you think I'm being stupid and can't understand how I exist! Except his was also the sort you get when someone shoves a stick up your –"

"So did you end up winning the spar, at least?" Karin at last interjected, apparently taking Nagato-sensei's interest as permission.

"Well – it was a double loss?" Naruto scratched the back of her head. "I mean, I made the Claw-Rasengan, but somehow he'd managed to get wire around my neck, so he probably would have killed me first, but I probably would have managed to drive it into his stomach even if he did behead me."

Nagato turned back to the board. "I've told you multiple times before already; you should just stick to your father's signature, instead of using the clawed variation you made – you hyper-focus to maintain the control, and in a usual battle, that sort of finesse is unnecessary. Did you see if he had a Sharingan?"

"His eyes looked normal," said Naruto, scratching at a whisker. "Still, are you sure I'll actually be in his team?"

"Well, that hasn't yet been fully confirmed," said Nagato, abandoning all pretence of writing at the board. He almost disliked teaching theory as much as they disliked learning it, after all. "But I'm assuming that should your mother choose to take up their offer of an alliance, then you will be."

Naruto paused and then asked embarrassedly, "Oh, and I forgot to ask – what are the Trials, again?"

A sigh. "Basically, a series of tournaments to showcase the clans and draw in customers from nobles, merchants and commoners alike. Having two Clans ally in Trials is the statement of non-aggression at the very least, and often a standing alliance. Each nation holds one, but usually only the native clans are allowed to compete."

Naruto wrinkled her nose. Ew. Politics. Seriously, when she became Clan Head, Karin could deal with that stuff.

"Us? Allying with the Uchiha?" Karin squeaked. "Haven't we fought against them in practically every Clan War since the existence of Ninja in Fire?"

Case in point: Karin actually knew all the Clan Histories, and what her father would have called the 'political undercurrents' – as much as she could be expected to know, at least, as a genin.

"Well, we used to be closely allied with the Senju as their distant cousins," said Nagato, switching into lecture-mode. "Furthermore, our alliance ensured us the control of the tailed beasts. The Senju held the Mokuton, one of the few kekkei-genkai capable of subduing the Demons. Furthermore, our very physical characteristics – wider chakra coils, larger chakra capacities, sealing abilities, longer lifespan, and chakra chains – suited us perfectly to become their containers, their hosts, what we would now term _jinchuuriki_. It was practically tradition every few generations – their generations, not ours, since we live far longer than they – to send one of our own to marry into their clan and become the new host. You, no doubt, know already of a very famous example. Mito Uzumaki."

This time, even Naruto knew the name; but instead of being impressed, she straightened, affronted. "You mean our best sealer and greatest ancestor married into another clan?"

"Your father is a foreigner," Karin reminded her, craning over the poke her on the cheek. "And he's the strongest of us."

"Don't you dare call him a foreigner," Naruto warned, easy cheeriness hardening into something harsher. Her hackles rose. Her fingers curled into claws on the table, scraping away more dust. "He's as Uzumaki as any one of us."

"He is now formally inducted into our Clan," said Nagato, to appease his student. "But back to the tale, have I ever told you about the Ninja-Village that never was?"

"Konohagakure," said Naruto suddenly. At their shocked glances, she harrumphed. "I do know some things, you know. That, and Father brought me to the Valley of the End, when I was really little, because I really wanted to see –see the country where he was born."

"Do you know the story of the Valley of the End?" Nagato asked.

"There were a lot of explosions?" Naruto said, before Karin interrupted, kicking the bottom of her table.

"The Uchiha-Senju War," breathed Karin. "There was an attempt to set up a treaty so that they could form a village and end their conflict. The Uchiha were only driven to it after the Senju offered them mercy at the point of the sword, so they were reluctant and bitter from the beginning. Soon after the village was inaugurated, there occurred a full blown battle between two pairs of brothers; Uchiha Madara and Izuna, and Senju Hashirama and Tobirama, and ended with –" here she cleared her throat, looked around nervously, as if someone might be eavesdropping, "–The summoning of the Kyuubi."

"Did you not ever wonder how the demon came into possession of the Uzumaki Clan?" Nagato asked. "After the battle, the landscape of Fire was permanently altered, and the fledgling Konoha destroyed. The Kyuubi was still on the rampage, and Senju nee Uzumaki Mito sealed it into herself to prevent any more damage and destruction. When she was a month with child, no less."

At that, Naruto and Karin exchanged uneasy glances. "Isn't that extremely dangerous?" asked Naruto in a small voice. "Especially if she's trying to contain such a large chakra source?"

"Of course, but at the time, there was hardly any option left. Both Hashirama and Tobirama had perished in the conflict; without a husband the Senju grew wary of her." Nagato shook his head. "And as the Third Senju-Uchiha war raged as the village collapsed, the Uzumaki were drawn into a long and pointless war in which they had nothing to gain – but you understand, they had to, bound as they were by the mutual assistance terms of the marriage. In the end, the Uzumaki lost half their standing forces, until there was no remaining heir but Mito herself."

"But she couldn't be heir – the second you marry out you relinquish your position in the former clan," said Karin, while Naruto nodded as if she understood.

"Ah," said Nagato, "And here is where it becomes tricky. As it so happens, the terms of the contract were signed by Hashirama and Tobirama and the Uzumaki Clan Head of the time, Mito's grandfather. As it so happens, during the war, Mito's grandfather perished on the battlefront, and the death of all the signatories nullified the terms; as it usually is with peace treaties between clans – none of them are ever permanent. Technically, both the child she carried – bearing the Senju kekkei genkai – and the Kyuubi, were now under Mito's sole control. You understand the conflict now, do you not? At last, after much negotiation, a new contract was devised; a non-aggression and trading pact treaty rather than one of mutual assistance, and in exchange for leaving her child with the Senju, Mito would bring the Kyuubi back to the Uzumaki. After she left the Senju, she dared not risk bearing anymore children, for fear of releasing the Demon, so she never remarried. Her civilian brother could not inherit, lacking the kekkei genkai, but his daughter, married to her ninja cousin, did happen to have two ninja children. The line of succession was passed down her brother's line until Mito's great-grand-niece became the next heir and holder of the Kyuubi."

"Aunt Kushina," was Karin's response, spoken simultaneously with "Mother," by Naruto.

"That was the first cooling of relations between our clans, but you understand, we were still allied. It was only when the Senju ended up attempting to retake the Kyuubi from us that we broke off all ties with them; that when your father massacred the Senju in their stronghold to save your mother. I would say," a wry smile, "that it predisposed the Uchiha towards us, for all the wrong reasons."

_(__I thank you and your consort for the service you did the Uchiha against the Senju. Not many men can singlehandedly cripple a once-mighty clan –)_

"Oh," said Naruto. Somehow, hearing the whole history of the two clans laid out made her feel very, very, small. And it was sad, almost, that Konoha had failed. Would her Clan have been an ally of Konoha, then, and would she go on dual missions with their shinobi had it survived? If Hashirama and Mito had stayed married, would she have ended up marrying out with one of their descendants, becoming a kunoichi of a village rather than a clan?

_Nah,_ she decided. _That would probably be Menma._

"That was actually more theory than I expected to be able to teach," said Nagato cheerfully, ducking his head to look out the window. The sun was now high in the sky. "As it so happens, Naruto's insightful comments have netted her eight points, which means when I am back from my latest mission, you can both rise bright and early to get a beat-down – I mean, spar – with me. And no new jutsu for either of you, unfortunately."

At this, the both of them burst out into simultaneous frustrated cries. "But – Nagato-sensei!"

* * *

><p>It was raining at sea. The wind blew the vessel so it lurched precariously to the right, water on deck sloshing and churning. Sasuke had drawn his rain-proof coat thickly around him, glued his feet to the floor with chakra, and stared off the rails into the water. His mother had told him to go inside, but Itachi was outside standing guard, and if Itachi could stay outside then so could he.<p>

Luckily, Sasuke had long learned how not to be seasick, to suppress the churning of his stomach, first, with pure willpower, and then, if he was desperate, with chakra.

Still, that didn't stop his shivering. He'd formed the beginning seal to the Katon jutsu, and carefully summoned the fire to his throat, feeling the chakra warm his chest and mouth even as it tinged his breaths with an undercurrent of smoke. The trick was to keep the heat, to enkindle it without expelling it.

"You should not be outside," said Itachi, still masked.

"We should have made it to port hours ago as well," countered Sasuke. "But we haven't."

A laugh. "We're not heading to the Fire Ports. Travelling through the territory required to reach the Hyuuga is especially risky at this time. The seas, on the other hand, are fair game, for any clan."

"But by ship the journey would take at least a week!" Sasuke said.

"Against the diplomatic nightmare that would be seeking passage through the Inuzuka territory? If they accepted our passage, even at a price, they would risk injuring their own standing with the Sarutobi. The Nara? Even less likely."

Sasuke huffed at once again losing an argument, and the caged Katon he was holding burst out in a spray of sparks and smoke without the appropriate final hand-seals to guide it into a concentrated jutsu. Damn it. His control was still less than stellar. The renewed cold surged through his body.

"It still doesn't explain why you're coming," he said. "I'm the one going to be getting one of the Hyuuga on my Trials team – it's practically confirmed, unless Father decides that the Uzumaki would really unbalance the set-up or something. There's no need for you to guard us overnight."

Itachi moved towards the rear of the boat, and with a few swift hand-signs, the rain seemed to redirect from around the vessel, streaming into a steady vortex that propelled them forward. If Sasuke had looked at his brother with the Sharingan, no doubt the glow of Itachi's chakra would have blinded him.

In a show of mastery, the ship sped forward, and for a few brief seconds, Sasuke was completely dry.

And water wasn't even Itachi's primary affinity!

Sasuke scowled.

"Who says it's to secure a teammate for you?" Itachi completed his jutsu, and the steady drizzle of rain begun once again. "That's rather self-centred of you." Sasuke could practically hear the unsaid chiding _foolish little brother_.

"It's the most logical conclusion," said Sasuke, irritated, as he began the Katon chakra-control exercise again. He could never win an argument with his brother. "We negotiated new trade terms with them just a few months ago. The Uchiha need nothing on that front, and moreover, I need another teammate for Trials, especially since there are no other Clansmen at my age or level."

"Your rhetorical skills are improving," said Itachi, stepping down from his raised post. "But your reasoning is flawed. It is true we shall be going to discuss who will be competing with you. But that is not the only issue at hand."

And that made Sasuke tense up. The heat flared in his throat, impatient, begging to be released against an enemy shinobi. He choked it back down, trying to steady his mood and mind.

The only three issues worth travelling by sea for seven days for were, he reminded himself, trade, alliance-hunting, or war. And if Itachi wasn't here for trade, or for the Trials –

"Are we launching a pre-emptive strike against the Sarutobi?" Wisps of smoke escaped his mouth as he spoke. He hurriedly reformed the same hand-sign, and concentrated on holding the damn chakra in place.

"Nothing so drastic," said Itachi, passing him. His fingers reached out, and Sasuke instinctively moved to knock the hand away, but the movement was too fast to be dodged. Two fingers poked his forehead. "You're still too slow, Sasuke," he said, voice tinted with soft humour, as he turned his back to go below deck. "After all, if I were an enemy shinobi, you wouldn't be standing."

"Tch." Sasuke formed the hand-signs with his numb fingers, and spat. The Fire-Dragon roared from his mouth, bright and hot in the downpour. Steam fizzled over the wood, and the fire briefly illuminated the grey skies. The edge of the flames licked the back of Itachi's collar, before being extinguished by the rain. "Don't be so sure."

Itachi raised the trapdoor, and turned back just before making his way inside. "Ah, but if I cannot be certain of my foolish little brother, what can I be? Come inside. We still have a week to wait through, and it would be unfortunate indeed if you were to catch a cold."

* * *

><p>The gong rang. The sound reverberated throughout the dojo.<p>

It was night, but the room was brightly lit and the windows to the cold darkness outside were drawn shut.

"Again," her father said.

Hinata drew upon her last scraps of grace as she pushed herself first onto her knees, then to her feet. Opposite her, Neji had already shifted again into the opening stance, one palm extended upward. He twitched his fingers in a beckoning move.

They did not conduct their spars with actual strikes. That would be both exhausting, and a waste of time waiting for the tenketsu to reopen. Instead, feather-light brushes were enough to indicate which chakra-points were hit, which muscles or joints were damaged, and they adjusted their stances accordingly.

A few good hits around the stomach, the chakra centre, or towards the heart would lead to an immediate restart of the spar. After all, if that occurred in the real world, it would be an immediate kill. Hinata had seen the medical diagrams. A few well-placed strike could cause the heart itself to seize up and stop beating, or even explode. Another, lower hit could collapse an entire lung chamber.

She immediately aimed to seal off Neji's arms. They moved in sync, arms and stances flowing in and out of each other. Female Hyuuga tended to be around equal with the males at Gentle Fist proficiency. After all, females were faster with their hands if slower at covering ground and weaker at delivering blows, and it was dexterity that was most important in the Jyuuken Style.

However, Neji's speed outstripped hers by a notch. And each move of his struck true.

Two hits on his arm, one to his shoulder. Neji let his left arm dangle uselessly, but in her brief retreat to relaunch an attack he slid his right hand through and under her guard. His fingers grazed the point just above her navel.

Had they been using chakra, the blow would have caused internal bleeding and possibly ruptured her stomach.

She was good. Passably good, at least. Maybe even pretty good, if she was feeling optimistic.

Neji? Neji was better.

"You're improving, Hinata," said Neji, bowing. There was that note in his voice, a self-assurance that came from knowing he was better, would always be better. "The shoulder strike was particularly well-aimed. Though you could work on your mid-level defences."

While Hinata was certainly passable and solid as an heiress, with Neji as her cousin, there was always some who whispered about transferring his seal and subordinating both the Hyuuga sisters instead. After all, what was one twin father to another? The only thing keeping both her and Hanabi's heads unmarked was the stubborn loyalty that Uncle Hizashi still possessed.

"Thank you," she said, bowing in return to her cousin.

Hiashi stood from his seat, about to comment on the overall flow of the spar itself, when Hanabi burst in through the dojo doors. "A messenger hawk arrived at our window!"

"At what distance did you catch sight of it?" their father asked. "And how could you tell it was a messenger hawk?"

"I saw it in the Western Gardens from my room," said Hanabi. "And it was glowing with a developed chakra system. Of course it would be a messenger hawk!"

Hinata glanced at Neji, but he looked utterly unsurprised at the amazing range of Hanabi's vision.

When Hinata herself was at that age, she could not see from her room to her father's, just a few wings away. But thinking that Neji was similarly ordinary had been a silly assumption for her to make. In embarrassment, she tried to rearrange her long mussed hair; no doubt Neji had already read and interpreted her body language.

"We shall be conducting our negotiations in the courtyard," said Hiashi. "No doubt there will be a showcase of your skills, as well as those of the spare, Uchiha Sasuke, whom you will join the team of."

Hinata coloured. The prospect of Trials, of meeting people from other clans and going on missions was an exciting prospect. "I look forward to it."

If Neji was jealous, he didn't show it. He never showed a thing, making up for his lower status by presenting a perfectly polished exterior: alternately charming and reserved; patient and kind; cool, detached yet utterly polite.

"During your time on the team with the Uchiha, you will no doubt be shown into their territory. Observe their customs, their habits, their rituals, the workings of their clan."

Neji spoke instead of her, his voice carefully modulated. It was good enough to fool her Father, Hanabi, even, but not her; her cousin was uncomfortable. "You want her to be a spy?"

"Not spying, merely preparation," said Hiashi. "After all, if she is going to marry into the Uchiha, it is a sensible precaution to learn as much about her future place as she able. If she happens to relay back some information before she is married and her loyalties are changed in three years when she turns fifteen, then that is merely a fortunate coincidence for a shinobi clan such as ours."

It was at this that Hinata emitted a squeak. "I'm to marry my future teammate when I turn of marriageable age?" She clapped her hands to her mouth as her father's disapproval ironed onto her again.

"Hardly. If you were to marry Uchiha Sasuke, then he would be joining us. After all, our two clans are not so unequal that the Hyuuga Heir is worth even less than the Uchiha Spare."

Hanabi was still and silent, but her face was twitching with the sort of lively curiosity that little girls had about matters of romance – not that Hinata herself was much older.

"Uchiha Itachi," continued her father, "Is a fine shinobi. He is S-Ranked, at a very young age, a prodigy, and certainly he is closer to your age than many of the rich merchants who form our political alliance base."

The name Uchiha Itachi drew only a blank image from her mind. She'd sat across from him in each of the multiple diplomatic dinners that occurred once every three or so years. An impression of dark hair graced her mind, but then, most Uchiha were dark-haired. So were most Hyuuga.

"I w-would be honoured," she said, but anyone with the Byakugan would see the lie. Her stutter, which she had spent months coaxing into dormancy, flared into existence again.

How could she be honoured when she was being cast off from her Clan as a bargaining chip? How could she be honoured to give up her position as heir and much of her future as a shinobi? Was she really that unskilled? That unworthy, compared to Neji and now Hanabi?

But it was not the insult of being married out that hurt the most. It was the fear. As she prepared for bed after the spar, first being bathed by her Branch Servants, then performing her other ablutions and sliding into her futon, she could not stop her shivers at the thought of being locked in a foreign, forbidding compound, surrounded by eyes glowing red like blood and fire.


	3. Chapter 3

Note: Should I change my rating to 'M', considering sexual references and cussing?

Also there are practically no towns mentioned in Naruto outside of the Hidden Villages (and filler arcs) so I had to make up a few of my own. I hope they sound authentic. Tanzaku Gai is now much larger, and the Capital. If anyone knows the actual capital, feel free to tell me.

Also, with the amount of canon I'm contradicting, and the amount of fanon I'm having to integrate into this setting, I'm really, really tempted not to continue this. It has far too many directions it can go into, and far too many ways I can crash and burn while writing this.

Sometimes, I question my decision to write an AU divergence fic. I should relabel this as a straight AU. Maybe a loosely-based-off-canon AU, which, of course, doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

* * *

><p>There were three choices for any town located at the border of two clans.<p>

One, submit to the rule of a particular clan, in exchange for relative peace for its civilians. Of course, this meant submitting your citizens beneath ninja, and the power imbalance would always skew towards – to put it lightly – an oppressive atmosphere.

Two, beg the Fire Daimyo or some other high-up civilian noble for samurai forces. While samurai were undoubtedly more honourable and less likely, to say, walk into an establishment and demand free service, the tax burden of accepting the Daimyo's hand was exorbitant, and only the richest and most affluent of towns could afford this treatment outside of the Capital, Tanzaku Gai.

Three, field your own forces and declare yourself neutral. While it appeared to be the best option on the surface, the reality was starkly different. It meant petty thugs, thieves, murderers and scum filling your town, the flourishing of illegal and contraband trade. It meant an absolute inability to put down even the simplest of crimes. And just because you declared yourself neutral to ninja didn't necessarily mean you were free of them. It just meant they were better hidden.

This port town, Kiyama, had clearly chosen the third option to its detriment. Even the water was filthy from the muck that had been poured into it. There was a rank smell rising from the cobblestones and the docks and the crooked shop buildings, mixed with the smell of fish – which Sasuke wouldn't try even if they paid him, considering the state of the water.

The sound of shouts from docking, unloading and departing ships mingled with those selling their wares in the seaside market.

"I thought you said we were spending seven days at sea," Sasuke said to Itachi.

Itachi ignored the implied accusation. "Change," he ordered, tossing at his brother casual civilian clothing and shoes. "Hide your weapons, and prepare yourself. We're switching vessels. It won't be long before the other undercover mercenaries and ninja here notice the genjutsu, and subsequently, the Uchiwa fan on our boat."

Sasuke rolled his eyes and obeyed, strapping knives beneath his shirt and looping wire under his belt. "Then why dock at Kiyama in the first place –"

"Fugaku-sama, Mikoto-sama." The commanding voice of his elder cousin, Shisui, cut off any complaints he might have had. "There's an emergency – an uprising."

"At one of our bases?" Fugaku growled. Unlike his sons, he wore the Uchiha armour, making no attempt to hide his clan loyalties. "I assume you quelled it."

After all, a Clan that couldn't even control its bases was hardly worth calling a Clan.

Shisui shook his head. Already Sasuke could feel another genjutsu being layered around the boat as his hands flickered rapidly through seals. Where Mikoto's genjutsu was remarkable in the sheer number she could maintain at any one time, Shisui had the advantage in speed and realism.

"If it were one of our bases, we would have quashed it in an instant." Shisui lowered his hands, apparently satisfied for now. "It's at Tanzaku Gai. The civilians there – and some of the samurai – have started a riot against the Estates of the Noble Clans – and when the samurai went to intervene, a full-scale tumult rose through the city. The fighting's still going on, and if our – civilian – branches of the family do not see you there, they will think you abandoned them. We cannot afford a schism in such a delicate time."

"Too incompetent to handle their own affairs," Fugaku was snarling, and his hand was at his tanto. "And yet they have the presumption to be calling upon _us_?"

Mikoto finished tying her bun, sliding two senbon in place so they crossed in an X. "I suppose it is time to see my parents at last," she said. "Fifteen years was far too long a reprieve."

Only Itachi's calm, assenting silence held Sasuke's tongue back. How had he not known this? How had twelve years gone by without anyone mentioning that he had civilian grandparents? He'd always assumed his mother's parents were killed in battle, and had not asked more.

Some of the rage dissipated from his Father's demeanour. "You need not come," he told his wife, his words uncharacteristically gentle. "If you wish, you may proceed with Itachi to the negotiations."

Mikoto laughed, covering her mouth with one hand. It was a silly thing to notice now, as a simple habit of his Mother that he'd long grown accustomed to. But now, looking at her bearing, the twist that she put her hair in (like the much older fashions in the Capital), he realised something entirely new. "Who do you think I am, Fugaku? I can manage a simple reunion."

His brain, adept at visualising (especially with his Sharingan and genjutsu training) rapidly put together an image.

Take away the standard Uchiha jacket, the simple black cheongsam and the combat sandals. Take away the bandages wrapping around her upper arms and her neck. Replace the battle fan she had tucked into her obi with a simple civilian fan, take away the crossing senbon in her hair and place decorated chopsticks with dangling jewels instead. Put silk slippers on her feet and her body in a full-scale kimono –

His mother, laughing with one hand over her mouth, seemed to transform into a noble lady coyly hiding her face behind a wide sleeve.

He had seen her act the part of a simple-minded, decorative civilian plenty of times before other dignitaries. Sasuke hadn't ever thought that the reason she found it so easy was that, once upon a time, she actually might have been one.

His father switched to addressing Itachi. "I trust you can conduct negotiations on my behalf? You and your brother continue ahead to the Hyuuga. Unfortunately, I have a mess to deal with."

Sasuke was about to follow them down to disembark, when Itachi shook his head and instead led him up deck.

"As a pair, we are particularly vulnerable to hunters," he told Sasuke. "We'll leave by more unconventional means. We water walk, and then dock our other vessel from behind. No one should even notice us beneath the genjutsu."

Sasuke thought of the disgusting filth that passed for seawater surrounding the boat, and sighed.

* * *

><p>The Uzumaki Residence were barely out of the woods in terms of civilisation; their clan-members happily milled about in the dirt.<p>

That being said, Sasuke would take a week in their camp over an hour in the Hyuuga Compound. The Uzumaki might have been unsophisticated bordering on crude, but the Hyuuga made his collarbones itch, right below his neck. It always felt as if he were being watched; how could it not be so, when faced with eyes that ought to be blind, yet could see beyond walls and buildings and forest. Nothing was sacred beneath the gaze of the Byakugan.

Not treaties or secret messages. Not even the basic privacy of human clothing.

The compound, perhaps as a wry acknowledgment of the reality of their vision, had their inside walls partitioning rooms inside be paper-thin, so you could see figures moving behind. That was one thing they did share with the Uzumaki, though the Uzumaki favoured paper because of their natural sealing abilities.

"Welcome to our compound," said the Clan Head, Hyuuga Hiashi, bowing in the way that was customary. He was flanked by his two daughters. One was the heir, most probably his teammate, and the other looked to be just old enough to start sparring. "I hope the journey was not too uncomfortable."

Apart from discovering that there was an uprising in the Capital? No problem whatsoever.

"Greetings," Hyuuga Hinata stepped forward. She bowed a waist-level bow to him, one level deeper than required, especially considering that she was the heir and he the spare. Her short hair swung forward, exposing the back of her neck. "I look forward to being on a team with you."

He tilted his head forward the way a Clan Head would greet a civilian underling if that particular civilian were honest but poor. She'd practically bared herself for such an insult, overcompensating like that. "Why thank you."

Her shoulders did not stiffen, but her sister did. And Hyuuga Hanabi was young enough that she ought to still be playing with dolls or whatever thing pre-pubescent girls did before they became kunoichi.

So, there it was. The Uzumaki was stupid, and the Hyuuga was dull. Great team he'd been saddled with, there.

_At least neither of them are fangirls,_ offered his more forgiving side, and for once, he had to accede agreement to it.

"I would like to draft up the last of our alliance, as well as suggest that my nephew, Hyuuga Neji, be slotted in to round up the team," said Hyuuga Hiashi. "He is, of course, incredibly skilled –"

Itachi cut in smoothly, "We have already determined who would fill the third position of our team."

The careful denotation of the Uzumaki as the third, and least important clan, was probably to smooth the ruffled feathers from his own insult towards the heiress, and to detract from the insult of declining another Hyuuga upon their team.

The Hyuuga Clan Head remained impassive as he guided them back into the building, paying no mind to the sakura blossoms which he trod underfoot. The entrance, which seemed more informal than impressive, slid open, and the muted light from within bloomed into view.

Still, whatever semblance of modest living their home projected from the outside was shattered by the glowing light-bulbs. Electricity was the ultimate luxury.

"Are you sure that your father would agree with the arrangement?" Hiashi gestured them forward. Seeing Itachi swap his combat boots for indoor sandals forced Sasuke to adopt the same sign of trust, lest he present a disjointed front before the white eyes that watched them.

"He pioneered the new alliance himself," said Itachi. "Tell me, what do you know of Clan Uzumaki?"

He hung up his mask upon the hat-stand, as well as his backpack of gear. He even shed the wire that lay wrapped and hidden beneath his belt, as well as two knives beneath his flak-jacket. This meant Sasuke had to follow his lead with all his weaponry, concealed and unconcealed.

While he knew his brother could be dangerous enough without the aid of weaponry, this seemed like going a step too far. They were practically prostrating themselves as civilians – which was too much even for an implicit apology for his earlier rudeness.

Sasuke narrowed his eyes. So Itachi had been speaking the truth, on that boat. There was something more to these negotiations.

"I think this is better suited to a conversation behind closed doors," said Hiashi at last. He did not activate his byakugan to check for any more weapons. It was the symbolism of it that counted. "In the meanwhile, my daughter can entertain your younger brother."

And now it was to the part he hated most – playing the guest.

* * *

><p>The wooden floors were so polished they gleamed. The slippers literally squeaked upon the wood. It was quality wood, too, not the typical sort sprouted by the Senju in battle which sufficed as buffer-zones but as little else.<p>

Each time Sasuke had been asked to 'play nice' with Hinata, it usually involved a guided tour around the Compound. It was, however so windy and multilayered, the passages seeming to flow into an intricate maze, that each time he had been walked around he never knew where exactly he was.

"The sun is bright out," said Hinata, stopping by an umbrella stand. On it stood formal umbrellas and parasols twisting with paper-like silk, lace designs and dyed cloth in the form of butterflies and flowers. "Would you like to take one?"

He wouldn't be caught dead holding one of them. "No."

Beside him, the insolent spare of the Hyuuga was sending him glares from under her own chosen lace parasol. At least, he guessed it was glaring – the lack of pupils made it harder to tell – probably because of the insult he'd offered them earlier. If she weren't seven years old, it might have been threatening. As it was now, she should have been too young to have already sacrificed her sense of humour on the Hyuuga altar of formalities.

At last, apparently bored with wandering, the youngest Hyuuga daughter wandered off to frolic or do whatever a prepubescent girl did.

"Have you met the Uzumaki your brother was referring to?" Hyuuga Hinata asked, and the tone of simple pleasantries vanished with her sister. She led him into the clearly-civilian area of the Compound, out into the luxurious unfolding gardens. Peach and plum blossoms intertwined in the courtyard, the arrangement of the glossy stones underfoot like a yin-yang symbol.

"I have," said Sasuke, shading his eyes and tried to get his bearings. On his right, a fountain bubbled and splashed crystalline water. "I would have preferred your cousin, though. Is he entering the Trials at all?"

"He was meant to enter with me," said Hinata, acknowledging his thread of questioning while neatly dodging the intent behind it. "But if your brother really wishes to have an _Islander_ enter…"

She trailed off. Sasuke tried to decipher her intent in that apparent and uncharacteristically derisive tone. Was this an accusation of choosing someone off the Continent of Fire? Her trying to fish out Uchiha opinion on the proposed alliance? Was he meant to protest the implicit insult upon his brother and in defending their newest teammate, reveal the skills of their third teammate?

He probably could have spent the whole afternoon carefully digging out answers and dodging around carefully worded questions, but Itachi was here for more than securing a teammate, and finding out exactly what took precedence over playing status games with Hyuuga Hinata.

It was time to cut the bullshit. Especially since he couldn't care less what the Hyuuga found out about the Uzumaki.

"Her name," he said, "Is Uzumaki Naruto. She's the daughter of their Clan Head," _And jinchuuriki_ went unsaid, "And the fabled Yellow Flash. She has a few good techniques up her sleeve, but she lacks combat-kill experience –" Her reaction to their to-the-death stalemate was clear enough evidence, "And she's about as bright as a rock."

Hinata knelt by a koi pond, showing no satisfaction at how easily he'd given her the information she wanted. He kept standing as she set the parasol, now retracted, upon its side in the grass. He would have walked away, but the tension in her spine and the set of her jaw showed clearly she had something to say.

She trailed her hands through the water, and spoke. Finally. "From today, I will no longer be the Heiress of the Hyuuga. I am to be demoted to Spare under my sister Hanabi and engaged. In three years, my name will no longer be Hyuuga, but Uchiha."

She turned, at last, half pulling her hands from the water. The liquid had gelled around her fingers, with unconsciously emitted chakra.

He thought he'd escaped being married with the Uzumaki rejection! To think – "You mean I'm to be –"

"My new brother-in-law," said Hinata, knocking all the air out of his lungs.

Sasuke torn between relief and horror, asked feebly, "Congratulations?"

And then it dawned on him. They weren't here to confirm Hinata as a teammate for him. That had already been decided from the moment the two clans had children in the same year-group.

No. They were here to finalise repayment, repayment from before he was born, when an undercover Uchiha Fugaku had rescued a Hyuuga Hizashi from certain death at the Kumo operating tables, and the two men had gone on to win a cross-continental war.

A life for a life. And from the perspective of the Hyuuga Clan Head, a brother for a daughter.

"I'm sorry for what I did and said to you earlier," said Sasuke, and he meant it.

"You don't need to apologise. I won't become an Uchiha until I'm fifteen." In strict contrast to her earlier meekness, her back was ramrod straight, and her mask had fallen away to misery.

He remembered a fate that he had so narrowly avoided over a dinner table. He remembered lying beneath a paper-dome roof, surrounded by crimson hair and indecipherable seals, ink the only barrier to a cold and relentless tide.

_(The words that had saved him: "I assure you it is not necessary at this juncture.")_

And another question hovered beneath the relief – if not now, when? If not her, who?

"You're a Hyuuga," said Sasuke, at last, the only comfort he could manage. "A Spare, perhaps, but a Hyuuga nevertheless. You will always be a Hyuuga." A lie. He knew it was a lie, and so did she – but perhaps it was the only lie that had at its core a grain of truth.

Sasuke picked up the lace parasol, and handed it to her. She took it, and they continued in silence through the gardens.

* * *

><p>"I admit, I cannot fathom your decision," Hiashi said, once they had entered the negotiating room. "You would take someone off the mainland instead of a prodigy from our Clan?"<p>

Itachi did not activate his Sharingan, following the treaty terms. It was just as a Hyuuga would never activate his byakugan within walking distance of the Uchiha Compound. There were probably a few seals – not obscuring the Byakugan, not wholly – which served to "fog" the room with ambient chakra so that their lips could not be made out and finer details, such as handwriting, would be blurred. He could feel the thrum of it.

"May we defer this discussion until we have signed and confirmed our treaty?" He unrolled a scroll of oiled paper, and activated the Storage Seal inked upon it and drew out the contract. "I have brought it, as is customary."

Hiashi relented, albeit temporarily.

Such an arrangement was common when constructing political alliances. The Hosting Clan held greater power and influence in the negotiations, and this was usually evened out by the Guest Clan drawing up the initial contract draft and the final contract draft.

"I must admit, it is… unusual for a Clan Head to defer to his Heir, particularly on matters of his own marriage," said Hiashi, drawing out his own calligraphic pen and scanning the page for any hidden potentially damaging sub-clauses.

"There was urgent Clan business that they needed to attend to."

"Ah. The uprising?" Hiashi asked. Which begged the question why he had asked in the first place.

"Was your Estate spared?" asked Itachi.

A shred of humour showed on the Hyuuga's face. "It seems not even my cousins in Tanzaku Gai can tell the difference between my brother and I should we choose to swap places."

Itachi laughed politely. Point made. "I brought two identical copies for safekeeping on the part of both our clans."

Hiashi at last reached the bottom of the thin scroll and signed with a flourish, before slicing his own thumb with a kunai and pressing it upon the page beside his name, and repeated the procedure with the other.

"I yield my daughter Hyuuga Hinata, when she comes of age, to the Uchiha Clan. Any children of hers shall be Uchiha and Uchiha alone, and her line of Hyuuga clan descent shall end with her name."

Itachi took the pen that Hyuuga Hiashi offered him. His only sign of displeasure was his white-knuckled grip on the writing utensil. He, as the Heir, had to marry for politics.

If he sacrificed his happiness, then maybe, just maybe, Sasuke could keep his.

"I accept Hyuuga Hinata as my consort upon her fifteenth birthday, as evidence of the friendship our two clans share. I vow to protect her and any children of mine she bears, and our children and ours alone will bear my clan line of descent. As my Consort, her place shall be in the Uchiha Clan until the day we both die."

The last sentence had been an added clause to the traditional cross-clan marriage vow ever since Uzumaki Mito had nearly stolen away her own son from the Senju.

A flick of the wrist, a bite on the thumb and the press of flesh to paper, to the first scroll, then the second, and the engagement was complete.

The motions, Itachi thought, as dry and clinical as the marriage itself.

"What does the Uzumaki candidate have to offer that our second candidate does not?" Hiashi leaned forward, steepled his fingers, gazed forward with white eyes that could, if used properly, see into his very chest, the beating of his heart.

Itachi, like most high-level ninja, was an expert at controlling his body language. Hiashi, like most experienced Hyuuga, was an expert at deciphering the body language of high-level ninja.

"It is not about the candidature," said Itachi. Truth was always the simplest option – now it was just about making the truth sound better than it was. "I have no doubt in the abilities of your nephew. What is at stake, however, is an alliance with a clan that has successfully sequestered itself off the mainlands and untangled itself from every conflict for the past twelve years."

"And why should I care?" Hyuuga Hiashi straightened in his seat as a knocking sounded on the door. "Come in."

A Hyuuga entered, bowing deeply to Hiashi and Itachi. "I have come to collect the contract for our archives." Itachi recognised him as Hyuuga Hoheto, a jounin and stealth-specialist from the Main Branch.

"Please do," said Hiashi, tension flowing out of his posture and his tone detaching again into precise politeness, temporarily abandoning the conversation as though it never was. Itachi had already done the same.

The door once again shut with a click, and the conversation resumed.

"The Uzumaki could prove of valuable strategic importance," said Itachi. "The Uzumaki, whose main dominion happens to be a chain of islands connected by naturally occurring eddies, tidal currents and whirlpools, have a mastery over the sea that both the Uchiha and Hyuuga lack. 'And the seas are fair game for any clan, should you reach their waters'."

"Did you come here to recite mere nursery sayings?" the Hyuuga asked.

Itachi leaned forward. He was not one to blindly follow the call of patriotism and hatred and Clan Pride, but it would be what he needed to secure the Hyuuga.

"Twelve years ago, the Sarutobi were not fit to even be a vassal of a noble Clan. Today, they stand as a major Cardinal clan with their own vassals. Twelve years ago, the Senju were a name that made even us – the Clans bearing the blessed eyes – tremble before them. Today? They are nothing more than a shadow, so pathetic they had to swear fealty to the Sarutobi and forsake their own names for survival. What are they now? They are _breeders_. Twelve years ago, the Yellow Flash changed the entire face of the Land of Fire."

The Senju Massacre was a chilling tale to contemplate – that one of your own might rise up as traitor and destroy your family from the roots. The fact that Namikaze Minato had been a bastard prodigy had only exacerbated that.

"And the Uzumaki were a key pivot," said Itachi.

Here, the Hyuuga Head outright snorted. This, in Hyuuga body-language, was equivalent to the sort of disgust and mingled contempt that would lead to any other Clan Shinobi spitting on the grave of a loathsome enemy, and pissing all over their corpse. "That man could have been ruling over the entirety of the Senju, bastard blood aside, and he threw it all away for some Sage-damned Uzumaki kunoichi. He went _traitor_. That is not an achievement of glory, nor any testament to the Uzumaki Clan except that their women cause skilled shinobi to lose their wits."

Itachi gathered all the bearing he had seen his father muster in Clan meetings and foreign negotiations. He did not look down, he did not flinch. His father could have ordered the Hyuuga to heel, called upon their friendship, caused resentment even as he asserted their authority.

But Itachi, a mere heir, could not. Not without seeming presumptuous. And besides, the last thing he wanted to do was to anger a Clan whose daughter he would be marrying in three years.

"And that is where you would be wrong," said Itachi softly. "Tell me, do you know the name of the kunoichi you speak of, and who she is?"

He did not wait for an answer, because there would not be one. The Hyuuga lived nowhere near the Eastern Shore, and it was doubtful they could identify the Land of Whirlpools on a map any more than Itachi could identify the minor Clans in the Land of Lightning.

"Her name," he said, "Is Uzumaki Kushina, and she is the jinchuuriki of Nine-Tails Demon Fox."

* * *

><p>"As a pre-emptive strike, it was an utter failure." Orochimaru threaded his fingers through long black hair as elegant as the dancing geisha around them. One was strumming on her lyre. Another leaned her head against the shoulder of Jiraiya.<p>

They were currently in the _Dancing Phoenix_, a rather renowned 'geisha' house. Or, to be more crude, a _tea-and-whore_ house. Orochimaru would have preferred to conduct the discussions in his own private labs, but he had already been heading to Tanzaku Gai to see how their little venture had panned out. And it was owned by Jiraiya. For all his comrade's faults, Jiraiya was probably better at information-gathering and security than he was.

Besides which, it was a good cover.

"You're suggesting we cut our alliance with Kato Tsunade so soon?" Jiraiya swirled the alcohol before him.

Orochimaru scoffed. "Has her widowed act truly softened you so greatly? Or perhaps was it her other endowments – monetary, of course?"

Jiraiya made a show out of swigging an entire cup of plum wine. The girl at his shoulder giggled and snuggled further into him. "Don't be ridiculous. She is, after all, a clan-member. I'd stick to unaffiliated widows any day, let alone ones with a vengeance streak as wide as hers. Great shame though. Her tits are amazing."

Orochimaru pressed the point again. "I nearly had to sacrifice a key piece in order to keep word of our movements from the Noble Four Clans. I hope you realise the effort I placed into procuring a Bone-Wielder, not to mention my other specialised guards as well as my best and brightest upcoming genin! I have no doubt your own Akatsuki were left scrambling after the debacle. And who did the former Senju Princess volunteer to our cause? Her apprentice?"

Another girl arrived, her hips swinging. Jiraiya smacked her rump. She blushed, and Jiraiya directed her to take a seat beside Orochimaru himself. "Calm down."

"You do that just to annoy me." Orochimaru ignored how his chest was being petted through his robes.

Jiraiya grinned. "I'd include a few male members too, but my predominant customer base prefers the female specimen – it'd cut back on the profits. But if you close your eyes and pretend she has a dick –"

"Perhaps you could cut your own off and donate it for such a worthy cause," Orochimaru leaned back on the cushions. "Certainly it would grant you more sense."

Any other man would have been horrified. Jiraiya had already become desensitised. "I'm flattered you consider me worthy of such attentions. Unfortunately for you, my privates remain my business." A slight edge showed, since Jiraiya did take any threats to his copulation drive rather seriously. "Any progress on your part?"

Orochimaru shrugged, considering. "Little worth mentioning. I was investing rather more than I should have into the civilian uprising. But it is indeed far, far too early for a true Revolution."

"Tsunade is going to bring her own fight into the open," said Jiraiya. If we're lucky, this will act as a sufficient distraction from my other plans."

"Oh? You plan? I hadn't thought you capable," said Orochimaru. "Do tell, Jiraiya-kun."


End file.
